War Tax Resistance in the Friends Journal in 1961

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
1961

By 1961, war tax resistance, or at least increased
anxiety about paying war taxes, has surfaced in the Society of Friends, and we
can see evidence of this in the pages of Friends
Journal from that year.

Groping towards a “peace tax” plan

The war tax resister’s equivalent to the alchemist’s “philosopher’s stone” is
the “peace tax” — which is capable of turning the leaden bullets of taxes for
war into the golden promise of taxes only for the nice things. Like the
philosopher’s stone, its existence has been theorized a great deal and
demonstrated very little. In 1961, Friends began
their search for the legendary beast.

In the 15 February issue is a mention that
the Peace Committee of the Pacific Yearly Meeting had begun circulating a
preliminary plan for something it called a “civilian income tax bill” in
order “to sound out the interest of the peace movement before deciding whether
to press for legislation, and specifically to get reactions to the stipulation
that pacifists taking advantage of paying into the suggested alternative,
UNICEF,
would be willing to be taxed an extra five per cent. No other test of
religious objection to military defense, such as is presently required of
draft age
C.O.s is
proposed.” Egbert Hayes of Claremont, California, is given as the contact
person for this effort.

A follow-up article in the 15 September
issue draws the comparison between this effort and the ongoing effort of
some of the Amish to win a conscientious objection from the social security
system, but notes that “little support has been found [for conscientious
objection to military taxation] from the newspaper writers and members of
Congress who defended the Amish.”

In reply to the suggestion that conscientious citizens should have a right to
“vote with their tax dollars” for alternatives to war, Senator Joseph S.
Clark wrote that this “would cause great harm to our country’s fiscal system.”

He may have anticipated that those “voting” in such a way would be much more
numerous than the members of small sects or groups, since many who do not
think of themselves as pacifists might agree that there is a dangerous
disproportion between the national expenditures for military threats and for
the winning of world friendship.

Some thought had been given to the possibility that if “civilian” tax payers
paid their money to
UNICEF,
Congress might simply reduce its own $12 million contributions to
UNICEF
and divert that money back to the non-civilian budget. Also:

The Claremont bill, better as a proof of sincerity than the questionnaire
method used by draft boards (who are no experts in theology), calls for tax
payments that are five per cent greater than the computed tax and for
publication of names. The latter we could achieve now without waiting for
an act of Congress. Willingness to take an unpopular stand before one’s
community is a surer test of conscience than any judicial inquisition. And it
is exactly the thing needed if we are to influence opinion.

As shown by many cases of war-tax refusers who have had property seized,
there may be no real alternative to the payment of a required number of
dollars by those of a certain income level. Some write a protest on their tax
returns, but this kind of protest, like the secret ballot, is far from
enough. As John Sykes pointed out in his book on The
Quakers: A New Look at Their Place in Society, the prosperity and
bourgeois status of the Quakers after their years of persecution silenced
them in more ways than one. And they are not more silenced than thousands of
their natural allies, unknown and isolated, having other religious or
nontheistic backgrounds. It is not a Hamlet’s conscience that “makes cowards
of us all,” but the structure of society with its oligarchy or power elite
controlling most forms of employment and mass media.

The article continues in this vein for a while, explaining why it’s so
difficult to stand up and dissent, and how even those who work up the courage
to do so are so frequently drowned out, dismissed, or ignored.

[W]hy should not each Meeting, each local peace group, write its own
statement, secure signatures from as many sympathizers as possible, and
distribute copies? The actionists do not always take time for reasoning or
for a dignified approach that will persuade people to hear their reasons. But
they are right: reasoning is not enough. It takes the combination of reason
and personal courage; it takes individual decisions which do not wait for
either our own or enemy governments to disarm. We can rarely escape taxes,
but we can speak.

There was another movement gaining interest in Quaker circles around this
time, in which people were voluntarily taxing themselves one or two percent
of their incomes and sending this money to the United Nations, which, at that
time, was still seen by many people to have potential as a sort of global
arbitrator or adjudicator that might “take away the occasion of war” (this
in the face of the fact that the
U.N. had recently
authorized the U.S.
war in Korea). I don’t see much evidence of overlap between the people
advocating this and the people rekindling interest in war tax resistance, but
the fact that this was in the air probably helped to shape the “peace tax”
plans and redirection efforts that followed. One note in the
1 September 1962 issue does seem to suggest
that war tax redirection was one motivation for people participating in this
voluntary U.N. tax
project:

An opinion of the legal department of the United Nations has made clear that
gifts to the U.N.
or to its specialized agencies are not tax-deductible.

Any checks sent directly to the controller of the United Nations should be
marked for a specific program to avoid having them go to the general fund of
the U.N. and
thereby merely reduce the assessments of member governments.

Here’s another note of interest on this topic, from the
1 August issue:

The Friends Meeting at Pittsburgh,
Pa., has expressed
publicly its serious concern for the Amish farmer whose work horses were
recently seized by the Internal Revenue Service for nonpayment of social
security taxes. Friends see in this infringement upon an act of conscience a
much broader threat against all those who will not cooperate with the
government in support of war and preparation for war. They point to the
alternative of voluntary payments to special
U.N. funds in
addition to income tax payments.

Maurice McCrackin

In 1961, the Presbytery of Cincinnati began
defrocking the Reverend Maurice McCrackin, ostensibly because they thought his
war tax resistance was unbecoming of a minister (some suspect it was his
work against racial segregation that really raised the ire of his foes — his
church was the first in Cincinnati to be integrated). The
Friends Journal kept an eye on the case.

In the 15 February issue, a contributor
notes that the racially-mixed childrens’ camp “Camp Joy” was having financial
difficulty because of the church action against McCracken, the camp’s
administrator.

The Camp Joy Committee has this past year purchased a 314-acre farm as a new
site since in 1959 the Cincinnati Park Board
refused to turn on the water at the previous site, which was Park Board
property, because of the income-tax stand of two staff members.

It seems unlikely that a regional park board would actually have a policy of
refusing to turn on the water for clients who were behind on their federal
income taxes, so I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to those who suspect
that animosity to his racial integration projects was probably behind the
trouble.

The 1 March issue noted that “Almost every
day brings to the Journal office fresh protests or
statements opposing the military venture of the United States in Vietnam.” One
of these came from McCracken:

Copies of an appeal to those who wish to withdraw their support from war
(particularly the
U.S. war in
Vietnam) by refusing to pay all or part of their income taxes or by reducing
their incomes to a nontaxable level are available from the No Tax for War in
Vietnam Committee, c/o the
Reverend Maurice McCrackin, 932 Dayton Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Incorporated in the appeal is a statement to which tax-refusers can sign
their names and addresses. Signed statements sent to Maurice McCrackin before
the April 15 tax deadline will be used by
the Committee as the basis for releasing to the press on that day names and
addresses of the signers. The Committee suggests also that copies of the
statement be printed in publications, posted on bulletin boards, and read in
meetings by those who have signed them.

The 15 March issue had a larger article
about the Presbytery’s inquisition against McCracken. Excerpts:

The presbytery has shown inconsistency and indecision…
In October, 1959, after Maurice McCrackin’s
release from prison, the presbytery issued a statement of support, saying,
“Rev. McCrackin has not
broken his ordination vows. It is not the function of the presbytery to
collect taxes, and we find the West
Cincinnati-St. Barnabas Church
and its pastor are bearing a strong witness to Jesus Christ.”

Maurice McCrackin was tried in a civil trial in
1958, but the charge was not his nonpayment of
income tax for the past eleven years. He was charged only with not answering
a summons to come to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He was carried into the
courtroom because he would not walk, and he would not stand before the judge.
On this charge he served a six-month term at Allenwood Federal Prison.

“All the while our community work was expanding,” he recalled in a sermon on
the Sunday before the first hearing of the trial, “cold war tensions were
increasing. Nuclear bombs were fast being stockpiled, and reports were heard
of new and deadlier weapons about to be made. Fresh in my mind were the
bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.… If churches, settlement houses,
schools, if anything were to survive in Cincinnati or anywhere else,
something must be done about the armaments race.… I preached about the
dangers which the entire world faced.… I was preaching, but what was I doing?

“If I can honestly say that Jesus would support conscription,” he concluded,
“throw a hand grenade, or with a flame thrower drive men out of caves to
become living torches, if I believe he would release the bomb over Hiroshima
or Nagasaki, then I not only have the right to do these things as a
Christian; I am even obligated to do them. But if I believe that Jesus would
do none of these things, then I have no choice but to refuse, at whatever
personal cost, to support war.”

The charges are:

The Rev. Maurice
McCrackin has resisted the ordinances of God, in that upon pretense of
Christian liberty he has opposed the civil lawful power, and the lawful
exercise of it…

He has published erroneous opinions and maintained practices which are
destructive to the external peace and order which Christ hath
established in the Church…

He has failed to obey the lawful commands and to be subject to the
authority of civil magistrates, [all these actions being]… contrary to
the Constitution of the United Presbyterian Church,
U.S.A. (Confession of Faith, chapter 20, paragraph 4, and chapter 23, paragraph 4).

Specifications of these charges include the withholding of income tax, the
failure to file returns, and advocating that others do the same.

“I felt free,” said Maurice McCrackin, when he was in the grip of the
criminal court. “I could not have walked. I doubt if my feet would have
functioned. Had I walked I would have felt I was in prison, but in not
walking I felt that I was free.… It may be that the authorities will again
take possession of my body; but it is my earnest purpose, God being my
helper, that no man, no circumstance, no place shall be allowed to take
possession of my spirit and my conscience.”

In its 15 June issue,
Friends Journal reported the Presbytery’s decision
to suspend McCracken, and McCracken’s decision to appeal.

A follow-up in the 15 October issue noted
“the strangeness of a verdict that acquiesces in the motivation of the
defendant but in effect finds him ‘guilty’ for failure to test the income tax
law in the civil court. The seeds of the presbytery trial go back three
years,” according to Christian Century commentator
Virgie Bernhardt, a Quaker, “to reactionary forces stirred up in the community
by McCrackin’s integration activities.”

A further follow-up in the 1 November issue
noted that McCracken’s appeal “to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the
United Presbyterian Synod of Ohio” was accepted. The Commission “rebuked the
Cincinnati presbytery for its ‘unduly severe’ judgment and the lack of proof
that the minister had disturbed the peace of the Church, as the local
presbytery had charged.” They told the local presbytery to try again.

The following year, in the 1 September 1962
issue, a brief notice mentions that the United Presbyterian General Assembly
approved McCracken’s dismissal, and notes that 28 members of his church have
split off from the Presbyterians as a result and have formed a new church under
McCracken’s ministry.

It’s hard not to see all of this attention given to an internal battle in
another church as a proxy for an anticipated controversy that was just
beginning to stir in the Society of Friends.

(McCracken would return to the pages of the Journal
to tell his own story in the 15 May 1980
issue.)

Other war tax resistance mentions

A report on the Switzerland Yearly Meeting in the 15 February issue read: “We were stimulated by
the call to action and the living witness of several Swiss Friends who
regularly refuse to pay their taxes for military expenditure and then bear the
consequences.”

The 15 March issue includes a letter to the
editor from J.H. Davenport in which he writes, “I would be glad if through the
Friends Journal it could be made known that some
Friends (at least one) regret that some members feel it right to participate
in so-called ‘civil defense’ activities, ‘national defense’ contracts, and the
payment of income taxes, the major portion of which goes to so-called
‘defense’ activities of the national government, especially when the name of
Friends is used as a sort of endorsement. ¶ I have taken the liberty of
painting in the word ‘SOME’ in front of the poster that I have been carrying
during my lunch hour in front of the New York City Civil Defense headquarters.
The poster now reads, more truthfully, ‘SOME Quakers say No to All War.’…”

The 1 June issue has one of the earliest
mentions of a Quaker meeting formally encouraging war tax resistance:

Yellow Springs Meeting, Ohio, has been deeply concerned about support of the
national defense policy through payment of federal income taxes. Some of the
members have chosen to be conscientious tax refusers. The following is an
excerpt from a statement approved by the Meeting in
early March: “We recognize that payment
of federal income tax, like service in the armed forces, is a demand which
may properly move Quakers and other responsible citizens to take a position
of conscientious objection.

“Provided their action is imbued with a spirit of humble honesty and loving
social or religious dedication, we support both those who are conscientiously
impelled to pay their taxes in full, and those who undertake conscientious
resistance to war taxes. Such conscientious resistance may take many forms:
refusing to pay part or all of the tax, refusing to file a return, working
only at a job where no tax is withheld from wages, intentionally keeping
one’s income so low that it is not taxable, resisting coercion by tax
collectors, courts, and their agents, supporting other resistors and their
families, and giving public testimony and witness. We feel that persons
undertaking nonviolent civil disobedience should be prepared to accept the
consequences.

“We urge Congress and the President to consider legislation permitting
conscientious tax objectors to choose alternative service for that portion of
their tax dollars which would otherwise be assigned to military purposes.”

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